


Glowing Gold

by squire



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: And maybe to Lovers, Arguing, Enemies to Allies, Hux would rather burn than admit his feelings, Insecurity, M/M, That's Not How The Force Works, but a girl can dream, post-TFA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-18 11:00:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7312330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squire/pseuds/squire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do you think I don't know how I've messed up?" Ren keeps his voice low, the fire only flicking out around the clipped edges of the words. "But what's done is done, and now we're supposed to be allies. You need an ally, Hux–" </p><p>Hux doesn't need anyone, and least of all Kylo Ren. At least, that's what he keeps telling him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GallifreyanOmnishambles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GallifreyanOmnishambles/gifts).



> Written for the dear @generallyhuxurious (Gallifreyanomnishambles) to her prompt:
> 
> "Every time you get like this, all this vitriol comes pouring out and then you expect me to act like it never happened. I can't do that any more, I just can't." 
> 
> I was free to do what I want with that, so I hope you like it, Gen!

_...such potential, and to what end..._

_...the sweeter the promises the bitterer the disappointment they say and look at him...._

_...boy came into too much power at too young age is what I think. Better men let it get into their heads...._

_...an utter waste of resources if you ask me..._

 

Kylo Ren doesn't need the Force to pick up on the thoughts of these people. They aren't hiding them, they aren't being silent with them. They aren't even trying to keep their voices low when he walks by.

It's Mother's parlour and old Rebel generals, greying and glorious with new power, looking down on him with disdain, it's Father's cantina back rooms and weasel-like strangers side-eyeing him with distrust, it's Luke's school courtyard and the new generation of Jedi averting their gazes and falling onto hushed tones when he comes near, all that, all over again. Suspicion, dislike, mockery - everything is like a thick, yellow-sour fog that sticks to his feet as he wades through, tongue-tying, mind-numbing, exhausting.

He misses his mask. Fear of the unknown is one of the basest fear, sharp and untamed by civilisation. It used to cut through the fog like a knife, clear the way before him. Without it, he feels too soft, too unarmed.

His mask is lost along with any respect the First Order officials might have had for him. Master Snoke hasn't allowed him to make a new one. Kylo Ren has to learn to live with the consequences of his mistakes. To make the punishment fit the crime, he'd been also sent to assist General Hux in the lengthy and tiresome meeting of the First Order's council of war. The loss of Starkiller had shaken their plans, they need to regroup, cut their losses, unite their strategies.

Ren's eyes flit across the room and catch on a familiar figure - tall, neat, stiff, alone. He toys with the idea of reaching with his mind, tasting the imprint the general leaves on the Force, seeing through his eyes, taking a look inside his mind. He promised he wouldn't. It's of no use anyway. Even across the room, even with only his inferior human perception, Ren can sense Hux's anger. It's a pulsing white, blinding and thick cloud, and it tastes like a bite through his own tongue.

Hux hates Ren, has always hated him, hates him even more for the destruction of Starkiller, and now he can't even gain the upper hand in negotiations because everyone keeps mocking him for the burden he'd been saddled with. Kylo Ren, the failed Knight.

 

*

 

The break for refreshments drags on interminably. Hux has no taste for food today. He'd caught the sight of his face in the reflection on a window earlier - drawn, paler than usual, mouth one twitch from a snarl, eyes one blink from a glare. It's only the third day of war council and already he's cracking.

No one is taking him seriously here. No one seeks his counsel. He doesn't stand in a corner but it feels that way nonetheless, everyone giving him a wide berth.

Across the room, Kylo Ren is talking to someone. Some younger officer, perhaps an aide to one of the admirals. Pathetically trying to do what he'd been ordered to do. Hux grits his teeth to the point of pain. He _doesn't_ need Kylo Ren to do his work for him.

He'd better go and intervene before the fool embarrasses him again.

The young man cuts himself off mid-sentence and scurries away as soon as he spots Hux approaching. Probably relieved that he's not obliged any more to carry on with the conversation for the sake of manners.

Hux keeps walking, the slight jerk of his head the only command for Ren to follow him, and with a frown, the knight does. He also rounds on Hux as soon as they are alone - upstairs, on a corridor encircling the conference room behind panels of transparisteel. The lights aren't on here and it's dark enough that they don't cast their own reflections on the partitions, the room below clear and starkly defined like a strategic map.  

"I was getting somewhere with him."

"Into another embarrassment, I could tell," Hux retorts. "I'd appreciate it if you would just accept that strategic negotiations aren't your forte and leave it to those actually competent."

Ren is not looking at him. He's speaking into the vague direction of the bottom partition frame.

"I know what you need to accomplish in these talks. I was told to assist you, and I _can_ help you." He's oddly insistent, like someone who has trouble believing their own words. That's right, Hux snorts mentally: he can't believe them either.

"But you keep interrupting me every time I as much as try."

"Because we both know how well your _help_ had gone the last time you were in charge."

Ren doesn't protest that. One of his rare redeeming qualities is that he'd accepted more than his fair share of blame for the fall of Starkiller, and never once tried to volley at least some of the accusations back at Hux. He just swallows them all, like the bottomless well of shame he is.

"I can learn to be useful to you."

Hux watches the commanding officers below mingle around the room, mouths full of snacks, heads full of themselves.

"So far it's been rather painful to watch."

The talks are about to be resumed again. Hux feels he'd made his point and turns to the stairs again. A hand grips his upper arm - but that alone wouldn't stop him; it's the violent shake he gives to dislodge it that tangles his feet to a halt.

"It's not," Ren growls, his hand back at his side, fist clenched. "There's been nothing to watch yet. You never let me talk long enough for that. If I'm not of any help it's because of you. Why do you want to see me fail so badly?"

Hux can still feel the phantom pain of the brief grip. It burned right through the bone, his skin too thin, his flesh too weak. He should eat more.

"I don't want to," he drawls, "yet it seems to happen every time."

Ren takes one step closer. It used to be more intimidating when he still had his mask. His hurt is too naked without it, his anger too personal.

"It's not helping our situation when you keep making fool of me."

The retort comes to Hux quicker than he can think on it. "I don't have to make anything of you. You do the job all by yourself."

It could happen today, he realises. It could happen now, the moment Ren finally snaps and storms out of the meeting, out of this planet, possibly out of Hux's life, forever.

Instead, Ren is infuriatingly staying.

"What do you want from me?" he asks. Always so obvious. So painfully unpretending.

Hux pretends to think on it. Consider it in all seriousness. It will make the blow fall the harder.

"I'd ask you to just stand by and be pretty," and he sweeps his gaze purposefully along the length of Ren's scar, feeling rather than seeing the flinch on a level he silences immediately, "but then even I can perceive the impossibility of such a request."

He knows he'd miscalculated when he sees the flint spark of determination come back to Ren's eyes. It was a petty blow, the slight against his looks - and whatever Ren is, he's not particularly petty about his scar. Hux would almost think that he used to be more self-conscious _before_ he got it.

"I could be helping you. I should– I want to help you. Don't dismiss me, Hux."

So eager to prove himself. Hux tuts at him.

"I am trying to spare you the embarrassment - but by all means, go and make a fool of yourself. Don't forget to undermine everything I've accomplished so far, you're so good at that."

"Do you think I don't know how I've messed up?" Ren keeps his voice low, the fire only flicking out around the clipped edges of the words. "But what's done is done, and now we're supposed to be allies. You need an ally, Hux–"

Something boils over in Hux, and prepared insults give way to words that come frighteningly natural and faster than he can control.

"Oh do I now? How much more delusional can you get? Do you really think the Order would write off years of training and investment gone into me for what – a punishment for a single project gone awry? That it's only your beastly shadow looming over my shoulder that's keeping them from going after my blood? I am not dependent on you, Ren. If anything, it's me who's holding a protective hand over you and your failures."

He's breathing hard when he finishes, and his eyelids feel hot and dry when he blinks. In front of him, Ren doesn't appear to be breathing at all. Then he coughs - an odd, little wheeze, a breath too short, a thread of patience worn too thin - and side-steps Hux in the corridor, making for upstairs - for their quarters.

At once Hux realises that wanting Ren gone and seeing him go are two very different things.

"Where do you think you're going?" He hopes it doesn't sound too much like a question.

"Somewhere my presence wouldn't sully your shine, General."

Good. Ren seems hurt. Not resigned yet - that would be fatal. Hurts can be buried in that well of shame and they can never speak of them again, like they always do. For a second there Hux had been worried he'd finally hit the bottom of that well, the beginning of their end.

"Great, just when I thought you couldn't act more of a child, you prove me wrong. Get back here this instant. We have work to do."

Ren still has one foot on the first step. His head is turned slightly to the side. "We?"

"Of course. We are allies, are we not?" Hux can't keep the mockery from seeping back into his tone. "Forgive my short temper, I am tired. You're surely used to my moods by now, and if not, you should get to."

Ren turns to him fully, a plain incredulousness all over his face. "Do you even hear yourself?"

So perhaps he's not going to be soothed so easily...

"Every time you get like this, all this vitriol comes pouring out and then you expect me to act like it never happened. I can't do that any more, I just can't."

Hux is losing, he feels the situation slipping away from him, the tang of it too familiar too soon, and again, words break out from under a lid that should never get lifted.

"Then go - and do as you like. I don't need your support. And I'm sure there are plenty of people lining up for their chance to have you as their ally." He spits out the words, the sarcasm flowing down the well-worn course - but at the same time he's aware that the act is too brittle, the barb frail like an icicle, breaking in the wind, melting under the sun.

And Ren's rage is like a sun now, hot and penetrating. "You know, there could be!" He looks Hux up and down. "That's what you can't stand to fathom, can you? Jealousy, what an unbecoming emotion in a man in your position. Are you truly so insecure, General? Are you belittling me so that I wouldn't even think of joining someone better than you?"

Hux smiles, cold baring of teeth masking relief. Somehow, his diversion worked, despite treading a bit too close to home. Ren thinks he's jealous of him, and let him think that. He works as much sneer and contempt into that smile as he can and perhaps Ren of two months ago could be fooled by that... but this Ren can read him far better than Hux gives him credit for. This Ren doesn't miss the victorious satisfaction, flashing too early, underestimating his opponent once again.

"No... it's not that. You wanted me to think that but it's not the truth." He breathes in and in the next moment, he's crowding Hux against the wall.

Hux wipes his face blank but it's too late. The truth has already spilled through the cracks in his composure and now Ren is after it like a bloodhound, lapping up the scent, digging his nails in, tearing him apart.

"You meant it." Ren breathes out his discovery and Hux desperately holds onto his blankness, heartbeat away from cringing.

"You mock the idea of there being other people suited to me not because you don't _want_ it to be true – but because you're _afraid_ it could be untrue. But why then be so mean? If there truly was nobody willing to side with me, nobody to threaten your claim..." he trails off, confused, and Hux shakes his head as if he could stave off the inevitable arrival at the only possible conclusion.

" _Oh_. It's not about me. It's about you."

Behind Hux's back is the transparisteel window. The corridor is narrow but he could get past the knight, perhaps even without breaking anything...

"You lie so well because you're telling the truth," Ren says with relish of discovery and something like admiration. "Those rhetorical questions that I am supposed to take as insults to overlook the fact that they aren't rhetorical at all. You mean every word. You really think they have written you off. You believe you have no allies but me. And you're terrified that I will find out... why?"

"I have no need for your pity!" Hux seethes, uncaring any more for what he does or doesn't reveal.

Ren looks at him for a long while. Something is going on behind his eyes that Hux can't decipher. He's aware that his breath is getting shorter, that underneath his egg-shell thin armour of fury he's shaking, and he'd rather bite through his own tongue than plead with Ren to stay, to put up with him once more when nobody else would...

And then Ren is even closer than he's been before, his forehead pressed into Hux's, his breath filling Hux's panting mouth. Hux freezes.

"You're not stuck with me," Ren says softly between them. "And I am not stuck with you, either. I _choose_ to stand at your side _not_ because you are the only one who would let me, and I am _not_ letting you stay because I pity you. Whatever defeatist thoughts you're having, stop thinking them right now."

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Hux feels the coolness of the transparisteel seep through the material of his uniform where it clings to his sweat-covered spine. The lover edge of the window is a painful pressure under his ribs. He's ninety nine percent sure they can't be seen from below, the contrast between the brightly lit war room and the dark corridor turning the transparisteel into a one-way mirror. Nevertheless, he doesn't want to risk the one remaining percent and shoves at Ren's shoulders, hard. Ren doesn't budge.

"Haven't you heard them?" he hisses. "Weren't you listening this entire time? Do you want to tell me you haven't chanced a single peek into their minds? They all think I am – I'm a–"

Ren's eyes narrow in confusion before they widen with a revelation - for a second, the look of surprise is so plain and undiluted on his face that Hux wants to wipe it away with his fist. Then large hands grip him by the shoulders and shake him, and Hux's angry protest withers under the glare of Ren's instant anger:

"Hux, they were talking about _me_."

The words drop into Hux's mind like a spoonful of cold water into a boiling pot, the turmoil ceasing instantly. Ren watches his face, follows the path of Hux's thoughts, for once unfolding clearly on his face, and nods before Hux can even voice the questions.

"Yes, all those remarks about wasted potential and being too young to have any power." A wry smile, one that looks carefully trained, crooks Ren's scarred face into even more asymmetric shape. "That has been me as long as I can remember."

"You are the Master of the Knights of Ren," Hux replies mechanically. Surely they wouldn't follow someone as hapless–

"They recognise my superiority as a potentiality within the Force," Ren says as if it explained everything. Of course it would be so easy with the damned Force, Hux thinks bitterly. To be great not because of what you've done but because of what you could – and perhaps never would – do. Of course that would hold any value only for the devotees of the same sorcery as the one disciple that's currently crowding Hux against the wall, closer that he's been in weeks, months - ever, if he remembers correctly. There have been moments, before, heavy and charged, but never toppling over the edge between potentiality and actuality either...

"But now I've been bested in fight by an untrained scavenger," Ren adds, mouth flattening again.

"And I have allowed my greatest achievement worth billions of credits be blown up by a handful of Resistance pilots and one well-placed traitor," Hux rushes the words out. Hearing them aloud still stings. "So how can they still respect me?"

Ren frowns at it and Hux smirks, feeling a jolt of satisfaction. Even at his most desolate, he prefers being in the right to being coddled.

And then he's spun around, caged with a long arm splayed over his chest, and Ren's other hand grabs his chin and directs his gaze through the window and down into the war room.

"They don't _respect_ you," Ren begins, his breath hot on Hux's ear and words like lumps of ice down his spine. "They _fear_ you."

"Wha–"

" _Look_."

Contrary to the command, Hux feels his eyes sliding shut against his will, and then an image fills his mind - the same view of the same room, but somehow different. It takes him an embarrassing second of panic to realise that it's Ren using his powers to plant a vision directly into his head. His mind rebels at it but the intrusion is persistent - not hurting, but not pleasant either, like a pounding headache but without the sensation of pain.

 _Look_ , a soft echo without sound resonates at the edges of the vision and begrudgingly, Hux relents.

The vision renders the world in shades of a strange colour palette. The light is off - too bright in places, pulsing and flowing through the room like a lazy current. People are shapes and blurs, sharper when he focuses but somehow spilling over the boundaries of their form, oddly fluid in their movements and casting multiple diffuse shadows that seem to have a life of their own. It's confusing but mesmerising and Hux takes a moment to admire the ceaseless mixing and blending of the colours.

_What do they mean?_

_It's their imprint on the Force_.

Sunken deep in their connection, Hux knows the answer before he imagines hearing it. He doesn't need to ask any more questions. The answers are there, in his mind, washed up by the tide of Ren's thoughts like seashells on the shore, and all he has to do is pick them up and listen to their inherent whispering.

An old colonel approaching a general, ten years his junior, reeking with grey-brown jealousy like something that crawled out of a swamp to die in the sun.  

An admiral that had fallen out of grace in the past months and is due to retire in two weeks, the effusive wispy blue of resignation curling on itself in her blankness. Her flag-lieutenant, steaming with red ambition streaked with vermillion, dripping with spite.

A pair of officers arguing, one shining with molten gold of triumphant satisfaction, the other glaring white with anger, hot and zinging like stars bursting into hyperspace.

He also intrinsically knows the colours he doesn't see here, in the cockfighting pit of the war room. There's no soothing black of contentment, soft like the moment when the head hits the pillows after a long day, no mercurial blue of happiness, shimmering with silver like the path of the moon across the sea, no supple green of affection dappled with vibrant yellow like sunlight peeking through the leaves. There's no sweet, cream coloured serenity, nor there's the rich, dark, juicy purple of lust.

Suddenly the view shifts - it's no longer a direct observation, now it has the hazy silken gleam of a memory. Watching from this unusual vantage point, Hux at last pinpoints the exact moment of this scene. It's this morning; he can see himself entering the room, not among the first as to not look like a toady but desperate not to be the last one, having to face the looks of everyone turned on him. He tears his eyes away before he can take in his own colour - and then he forgets about himself entirely because suddenly the colours of everyone in the room blanche and decay into a suffocating grey, an acrid smell that scratches at the back of his throat like smoke from burning duraplast.

_That's fear._

Hux blinks and the vision is gone. Ren is still holding him against his chest, nearly nuzzling the side of his head, speaking directly into his ear.

"You _had_ blown up the biggest project of the First Order and you're still here. Alive. Still ranking general. They don't know what to make of it. They see Snoke behind you."

Hux examines the theory, turns the facts in his head to look at them in this new light. What Ren says is true - he should have been disposed of, and he wasn't.

Suddenly he becomes aware of several facts. Firstly, Ren is not letting go, his chin resting on Hux's shoulder, every brush of his cheek against Hux's temple sparking an electric, tingling sensation. Secondly, there's an unmistakable hardness making itself known against the small of Hux's back. And thirdly, they're alone. Nobody from below can see them.  

He turns, abruptly, still inside the loose embrace, and backs Ren against the opposite wall before the Knight can react. He pushes his thigh between Ren's legs, forcing him to stand wider, the height difference between them gone. They're still closer than they've ever been, dancing on the knife edge of their fragile balance, but now it's happening on Hux's terms.

"Is that why you're staying?" he hisses, breathing in the bitten-off gasp that escapes Ren's lips, their mouths so close, every Ren's heavy exhale tastes like a heady drink on his tongue. "It's the power that turns you on, isn't it?"

And it's maybe more than that, maybe they are more complex and twisted and damaged beyond reason, but the whole of it really boils down to this: Ren has been made to follow, and he can't resist the siren call of power, just like Hux never could. In his mystic fatalism, it doesn't matter what happened before, it only matters what will be, what can be. The power is Hux's to seize, and Ren will follow him to whatever end.

Ren is gone from his head but a phantom weight of their connection is still resting faintly on Hux's mind, his perception echoing with the ghosts of colours. There is black and silver-blue dancing in Ren's eyes, and when his mouth seals over Hux's, it tastes pure purple.

Hux can't see through Ren's eyes any more but he's certain that right now, he's glowing gold.   

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ups, sorry for the metaphors. My job of the past week has been translating a fucking cookbook with the blandest language imaginable, I took it out on this fic.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are very welcome! Especially if you want to see anything special in the follow-up part. So far my ideas about it are very vague.


End file.
